Strawbridge House

Strawbridge House is a Christian music group composed of members of the Gregg Strawbridge family, including Joy (vocals, cello, accordion), Jenna (vocals, violin, guitar, mandolin) and Julie (vocals). Their first album released (summer 2011) was Roadside Hymns. It features new hymn tunes (with old words) and arrangements (by Gregg Strawbridge), as well as (completely) original songs.

The sound we aim for is a living, breathing, genetic harmony and an acoustic quality produced by actual strings, wood, and quivering metal from a Martin steel-string, a Montalvo classical, an Ovation mandolin, an Epiphone banjo, a Stradivarius (copy) 1930s violin, a 50th Anniversary Strat, a Schecter square-neck dobro, a tin whistle, a yard-sale viola, a Fender stainless steel resonator, an accordion from an antique store, a Victorian pump organ, and a German handmade cello we got from a pawn shop in Columbus, Mississippi for $125.

Strawbridge House music highlights an unexpected legacy. While I had come to believe the Christian faith in college (in 1984), I did not believe there had been any Christians on my father’s side of the family. However, in 2010, in the process of helping to plant a church and train a young pastor in Maryland, I learned that my 6th great grandfather was the first Methodist minister to establish a church in America: Robert Allen Strawbridge (d. 1771) who came from Ireland in the 1760s. The music in Strawbridge House Roadside Hymns convey’s the spiritual legacy of the (actual) Strawbridge house in Lancaster Penn. by featuring the musical talents of all three of my children (Joy, Jenna, and Julie), as well as commemorating the Strawbridge House in New Windsor, MD and journey of Robert Allen Strawbridge.